A look at significant past matchups between the Spartans and Hawkeyes entering Saturday's Big Ten title game

EAST LANSING -- Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz has four victories against Mark Dantonio, more than any other Big Ten coach since Dantonio took over at Michigan State in 2007.

Dantonio has three wins against Ferentz in that time. His attempt to even things Saturday night will be like most of their meetings — season-defining for one side or the other, or both.

None of the previous matchups can approach the magnitude of this one, with the No. 4 Hawkeyes (12-0, 8-0 Big Ten) and No. 5 Spartans (11-1, 7-1) playing for the Big Ten championship and an expected College Football Playoff spot on Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Some of them can be credited for leading to this, though. None more clearly on the MSU side than the last time these teams met.

MSU’s 26-14 win at Iowa on Oct. 5, 2013, has been lost a bit in higher-profile triumphs for the Spartans in their run of 37 wins in 41 games since the end of the 2012 season. But that’s the day Connor Cook became Connor Cook, the day a team with a great defense turned into one with enough balance to win a Rose Bowl and raise the program ceiling to where it is now.

“He sort of took off — up until that point, he had been sort of playing OK,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said of Cook, who had won the starting job from Andrew Maxwell three games earlier but had been replaced by Maxwell on the final drive of the previous game, a 17-13 loss at Notre Dame.

“The thing I remember about some of the early-season film that we saw, it almost looked like the receivers were allergic to the ball,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said of that 2013 MSU team, which got huge plays that day from Macgarrett Kings Jr., Tony Lippett and Bennie Fowler. “They really were just not catching the ball very consistently. It just seems like in our game is when that all came together. The receivers really played well. And Connor Cook really hit stride. … It seems like they haven’t looked back since then.”

That wasn’t a classic game by definition. But Ferentz can reach back to the 1980s as an assistant coach for Hayden Fry in recalling some — Chuck Long’s bootleg to beat MSU 35-31 in 1985, Iowa’s end-zone interception to win 24-21 in 1986, and MSU’s second-half comeback to win 19-14 in 1987 en route to the Rose Bowl come to mind.

A pair of middling teams met in Iowa City in Dantonio’s debut season of 2007, and the Hawkeyes came back for a 34-27 double-overtime win. It was not unlike the 2012 meeting between a pair of middling teams at Spartans Stadium, when Iowa came back to force overtime and finally clinched in the second extra session when an Andrew Maxwell pass was tipped and picked off.

Those were dramatic games with no championship impact. In 2008, Iowa and emerging star running back Shonn Greene came to Spartan Stadium, and a late fourth-down stop of Greene by MSU linebacker Adam Decker gave MSU a 16-13 win.

That essentially knocked Iowa from the league race and allowed MSU to stay in it until a loss at Penn State on the final day of the regular season, marking the Spartans’ best season in nine years.

In 2009, Iowa visited MSU again, but this time as an unbeaten, No. 6-ranked contender. A home upset in prime time would have made the Spartans 4-1 in the league with a real shot to win it.

And a hook-and-lateral play to Blair White on a third-and-18 with 2 minutes left — a short Kirk Cousins pass to Brian Linthicum, with a pitch to White for a total gain of 38 — would have been one of the most famous plays of the Dantonio era if it wasn’t followed by a 7-yard touchdown pass from Iowa’s Ricky Stanzi to Marvin McNutt on the final play to win.

That was Iowa’s best season, an Orange Bowl win and No. 7 final ranking, until now. The Hawkeyes blasted 8-0, No. 5-ranked MSU, 37-6, in 2010 at Kinnick Stadium, then denied the Spartans a Rose Bowl trip by losing a lead late against Ohio State.

The Spartans blasted Iowa, 37-21, in 2011 at Kinnick Stadium, the key game on the way to winning the Legends Division.

“So those are probably the two you can throw out,” Ferentz said — and Saturday doesn’t figure to resemble them in terms of competitiveness.

“I think the history of the two football teams is that we have played some great games … I think there is a history in terms of what we do and what they do,” Dantonio said. “We do what we do and they do what they do. They do it well and I think what you have to do is what you have to do in any football game. You have to win up front.”